Boudreaux Basin to be enclosed by levees within a year

Sunday

Aug 31, 2014 at 6:26 PM

The a trip down Bayou Sale Road in lower Terrebonne Parish would have been a look into a different world 100 years ago.

Xerxes Wilson Staff Writer

The a trip down Bayou Sale Road in lower Terrebonne Parish would have been a look into a different world 100 years ago. The modern roadway cuts through the lower Lake Boudreaux basin, an area that has sunk and evolved with the encroaching coast during the last century. Today the area’s future can be seen as hulking dump trucks are used to build a new landscape. Across a flat landscape where patches of marsh grass interrupt open water, a new view will rise from the marsh. Earthen levees will soon tower some 15 feet over the surrounding landscape. The stretch of levees running alongside about half the stretch are significant because they will be the last enclosing the southern portion of the Lake Boudreaux basin.The winding road connecting Bayou Grand Caillou to Bayou Little Caillou cuts through nine miles of flat marsh where water creeps within feet of the road. The drive is the subject of ghostly legend and has been the dumping place for a few people who met an untimely death over the years. It’s not uncommon to see a bald eagle overhead. In the spring, one might find a painted bunting resting in the roadside bushes on its long migration northward. The road is a popular vantage point for lower Terrebonne’s marsh and roadside fishing, as all but one of the buildings along the stretch are gone. For a look at what the view off Bayou Sale Road might have been without the erosion of the coast, take a walk around Courthouse Square in downtown Houma. The proud oaks that shade people outside the courthouse were once saplings in southern Terrebonne, transplanted from Bayou Sale more than 100 years ago. Jean-Pierre Cenac and his sons transplanted 24 trees by mule-drawn carriage for the day-long trip north to Houma in 1886, wrote Christopher Cenac Sr., a Houma doctor who wrote “Eyes of an Eagle: Jean-Pierre Cenac, Patriarch: An Illustrated History of Early Houma-Terrebonne.” Jean-Pierre’s plantation in lower Dulac was his home for 40 or so years. Christopher said the land on the banks of the bayou was some of the most productive farming and livestock land in Terrebonne in the late 1800s. Accounts from the period describe miles-long rows of fields lining the bayou side. Jean-Pierre gave initial rights for a roadway that was the precursor to Bayou Sale Road near the plantation. “They had everything, cotton, rice, cane and all their vegetables and raised their own cattle and pigs and everything else,” Christopher said, imagining fields of crops lining bayouside land that is now mostly water.Today the view off Bayou Sale is much different with the skeletons of trees stunted and choked that line a path as a reminder of what once was. In the past decade, levees have gone up along Bayou Terrebonne and lower Bayou Little Caillou. A levee running parallel to the Houma Navigation Canal will also be complete early next year. With the lower portions enclosed, a stretch of levees along Falgout Canal Road will be all that’s left tying protection from Bayou Dularge to Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes. Nobody can be certain how the landscape will change with the levees in place. “It’s hard to believe that this is something that can be fixed,” said Theriot resident Olden Bourg as he pondered the steady encroachment of saltwater. In his 70 years, Bourg has seen the signs of the times: plants that once could only be found near the Gulf of Mexico now thriving near Houma, seagulls chowing on discarded French fries at the McDonald’s in town and passes he could once throw a rock across now requiring a rifle shot to span the gap. “You get used to not seeing those things,” Bourg said. “The saltwater will be at Houma next.” In recent years, Bourg has taken stewardship of what once was 100 acres of land off Bayou Sale Road. For years, his family used the property for hunting, fishing and trapping. Today, he still visits twice a week to have a look around. “At one time, it was 100-something acres. Right now, half of that is in the water,” Bourg said. “It’s still worth gold to me. Just to go down there and look.” He wonders how and if the levees will change the land, speculating the property might be worth a little more inside a levee. “Before it wasn’t worth 10 cents. Now it’s worth a dollar and a half,” he deadpans. “I’m not sure how the levees are going to change things.” The design of the levees includes passages for water to flow in and out. The primary bayous and canals will all have closeable gates that will remain open except during threatening weather.“Narrowing down these passes with the floodgate and levees makes an environmental difference,” said Terrebonne Levee District Director Reggie Dupre.Dupre said there has been some evidence of marsh returning inside parts of the basin, though the gains haven’t been quantified yet. “I wouldn’t expect them to make much of a difference as they are being put on existing hydrologic barriers,” said Kerry St. Pe, who recently retired as the director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program. “The waterways are still going to be open.”Thought only time will tell how the levees will change the area’s ecology, there are hundreds of millions of dollars set to be invested in projects that will introduce more freshwater to the basin. One of those projects, the $300 million lock on the Houma Navigation Canal, is being designed. “They should have been doing all this 20 or 30 years ago. Always waiting and waiting,” Bourg said.